2025 Workshop

Fady Asleh

Ph.D. candidate, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Director, Khazaaen Social Archive

Documenting the War: Archiving as a Tool for Survival in Gaza

In my position as the director of the Khazaaen Archive, I participated in Different documentation projects focused on Gaza. During this time, I accompanied dozens of documentarians, interviewed many photographers, artists, and activists from various areas of the Gaza Strip, collaborated with the al-Nawa Cultural organization in building its archive, provided numerous consultations to activists on documentation.

The documentation experience in Gaza is distinctive in nature, offering numerous opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge regarding survival mechanisms, the underlying political narratives in the act of documentation, and the impacts of documentary action when their materials are used in major projects worldwide. This uniqueness makes the documentation experience in Gaza noteworthy and exceptional.

I argue That the Gazans, despite enduring war, destruction, and attempts at erasure, were not passive victims. Instead, they were active agents, determined to confront the war through every means available, despite their limited resources. Among the most critical tools they employed were the practices of documentation and archiving.

Numerous of young men and women in Gaza have been documenting their activities and events throughout the war. This act of documentation is sometimes an individual effort with a personal dimension through a personal or family story. Many such examples have turned into books or digital archives.  Archiving, in this context, involves documenting the experiences of others by collecting and sharing their stories, a task undertaken by individuals who see themselves as capable of amplifying others' voices. Those documenting are often photographers, activists, or ordinary individuals with an acute understanding of collective concerns, or journalists. In rarer instances, documentation becomes a collective effort led by an institution, initiative, or organization. Such efforts are scarce in Gaza, particularly because they require infrastructure, technical equipment, and technological capabilities. Given Israel's targeting of cultural institutions, their buildings, and staff, establishing an institutional archive becomes nearly impossible. Perhaps the only example is that of the al-Nawa Cultural Association in Deir al-Balah.

The documentation initiatives in Gaza were mostly individual efforts that started as personal initiatives. Over time, the founders of these initiatives became activists who contribute to strengthening people's resilience. They were sought after by television channels and foreign media, or archives and libraries abroad reached out to them to preserve and utilize their materials. Through this documentation, they were able to overcome the media blackout imposed by Israel on Gaza. The use of mobile phones and technology provided them with the ability to document and publish in real-time. 

These photographs, videos, testimonies, and memoirs provide us with a rare opportunity to study the history of war from below from the perspective of those who have experienced, documented, and resisted it. They allow us to trace the mechanisms of struggle and the tools of survival that individuals have developed through their documentation and the materials they have produced about themselves.

In addition, these materials enable us to study various aspects of daily life, including social, educational, psychological, and cultural dimensions. They provide a wealth of information through which fragmented details -like pieces of a puzzle- can be synthesized to reconstruct the past as it was lived, there is almost no street, lane or house in which there was no person who photographed, wrote, recorded and published, and almost every obstacle that the people of Gaza faced is documented in videos, sometimes also showing how the people overcame such obstacles. 

In short, this extensive corpus of materials produced in Gaza documents and narrates the mechanisms of resilience and survival. Some of these mechanisms are about psychological resilience: documenting ways to deal with kids, dealing with fear and panic, as well as games and recreational activities during the war. Others are about resilience on the level of the community: making household tools from raw materials, growing vegetables and fruits in Gazan soil, purifying water with primitive tools, and community events. Still others concern technological resilience mechanisms: how to manufacture a digital archive remotely, how to design and publish using the phone only, how to ship the device with simple tools, etc. Then there are educational and cultural resilience mechanisms, such as university education platforms, and lecture platforms. Finally, there are human stories as means of survival: stories about the personalities the living and the dead.

My paper represents a preliminary attempt to analyze and understand this experience. It aims to amplify the voices of many Palestinians in Gaza that have remained unheard, while highlighting a remarkable example of resilience and survival. This resilience was demonstrated by ordinary individuals who utilized documentation as a tool to meet essential life needs or develop alternative solutions. Through this study, I seek to present inspiring experiences that I witnessed and learned from the people of Gaza during the war.

Fady Asleh is an archivist and doctoral student in history whose research focuses on the history of Palestinian villagers and their place in the larger Palestinian context. Asleh is also the founder of Khazaaen, an institution that works on documenting and preserving the Arab culture in Palestine and abroad.